Category Archives: Class Notes

Bank of American and Wells Fargo banks are leading consumer banks in United States. Bank of America has been recovering its image from mortgage mess create due to foreclosures.

Wells Fargo:

Wells Fargo bank has been steadily growing in personal, small business and commercial markets.

I used Topsy, socialmention and followerwonk, as social media analytics tool.

Customer service accounts: @Ask_WellsFargo, @BofA_Help. I am trying to find how actively these 2 banks use twitter for customer service and how much the users and banks are involved.

Analyzing the activities, BOA is certainly ahead of the Wells Fargo. The data shows that BOA users are actively using twitter for customer support and BOA is actively addressing it. Wells Fargo has relatively lower number of tweets.

Data from socialmention

BOA:

Wells Fargo

Comparing the sentiments of BOA and Wells Fargo, it is 3:1 for BOA, where it is 2:1 for Wells Fargo, whereas based on Passion, Wells Fargo in ahead of BOA 35% vs. 26%.

Looking at the top hash tags – BOA has iwillexposeyou, which denotes the users’ resentment. People might be still upset with BOA, due to the mortgage crisis. Similarly Wells Fargo top hash tags are not related to wells fargo, but occupy Wall street. All these hash tags denotes people’s opposition to the big Wall Street companies. May be these topics are highlighted because the users opposing these big banks are more active.

From followerwonk: Comparison of followers of BofA_Help & Ask_WellsFargo

The data shows that BOA has greater number of followers than Wells Fargo. Both of them have high user engagement, but BOA is ahead in Average followers per day and total tweets.

Conclusion:

BOA has been utilizing social media for customer service and awareness. This might be due to their efforts towards regaining customer confidence and rebuilding their image. We see some resentment from users against these big Wall Street companies. It seems like BOA is working in the right direction and utilizing the social media to connect with the consumers and provide them help as needed. Wells Fargo has been doing well, but need to increase the customer engagement.

Bank of America helps to grow an Asian specialty grocer

Wells Fargo “Six String Dream” Behind The Scenes Video

BOA has good presence on all the social media channels and it seems to be more active than Wells Fargo on the social channels.

Wells Fargo has been growing due to their sound business practices and great customer service both in brick and mortar as well as online.

Wells Fargo messaging on social media is more fun filled and customer centric. This is probably to attract more young generation and keep them engaged with such content. On the other hand BOA has more educational and corporate announcements on the social media channel. BOA has lots of hate topic/handles on twitter, which points back to unfair business practices adopted by BOA, during the mortgages crisis and foreclosures. BOA messaging is focused on improving the corporate image and educating the customers on different financial topics such as – saving, mortgage, investment, etc. It is hard to determine who entered the social channels first, but BOA is surely leading on number of followers, fan base etc.

Overall Wells Fargo is keeping light content on the social media, whereas BOA is using the social media channels for brand building. We all know the historical reasons behind it, BOA need to rebrand itself and win the customers’ confidence back. I would propose to both of these organizations to tap back into loans for higher education which is in line with current government agenda and hence may get a backing from it.

So why does a TMMBA class have a public facing blog? Why are assignments submitted in a such a way that the whole world can view them?

One of the main themes that will be surfaced during this class is the idea of a “social culture.” The social culture permeates not just friend groups, but small businesses and large corporations.

You all likely have co-workers who are leveraging the social culture inside their organizations to accelerate their career paths, defining themselves as subject matter experts in channels where their higher-ups can notice them.

You’ll be writing about companies, products and social media tools on this blog. Some of you will get responses from the marketing people at these companies. You’ll be able to tell who the really smart companies are, because they will reach out to this group of 100 Technology MBA’s in one of the country’s technology epicenters, and ask you to demo their products.

Also, this class – and this blog especially – is a safe sandbox to experiment with new ideas. Try types of content or writing styles you might not put on a personal blog or LinkedIn profile. Test what works and what doesn’t. Have some fun with this form of media.

Above all, see if you can figure out how a social culture can benefit you.

Costco Wholesale Corporation was founded in Seattle and now has its headquarters in Kirkland, WA. It is a membership warehouse club that provides a wide selection of merchandise. As of 2012, it was the fifth largest retailer in the United States, and the largest membership warehouse club chain in the United States.

Costco focuses on selling products at low prices, often at very high volume. These goods are usually bulk-packaged and marketed primarily to large families and businesses. Furthermore, Costco does not carry multiple brands or varieties where the item is essentially the same except when it has a house brand to sell, typically under the Kirkland Signature label. This results in a high volume of sales from a single vendor, allowing further reductions in price, and reducing marketing costs. Costco is known to limit its price markup on items to 15%.

From a social media strategy perspective, Costco seems to not be active in this space. Costco did not have a twitter account or a Facebook page till couple years ago. A quick lookup at Costco’s twitter accounts shows zero tweets! It appears they created the account and then forgot about it. Its Facebook page has 871,494 likes and counting. It does very little in terms of attracting customers to it’s twitter or Facebook page. Most posts on Facebook have been about new store openings. Recently, they have started to post about their ‘online offers’ which is nothing but a link that take you back to the Costco online site. They also have started to post pictures about their vacation packages that they offer through Costco online but the content is very limited.

Perhaps it is Costco’s strategy to not participate; maybe they are monitoring and working a social media program behind the scenes. I’m sure they would like to listen to what their advocates, customers or detractors are saying and it’s only a matter of time before they realize the power of social media & how they can benefit as a company from its use.

Kindle, social?

The Kindle started as a dedicated e-reader; today the term Kindle is used for a range of e-book reading products including dedicated e-book readers, tablets, applications for mobile devices, and a browser-based e-book reader. As Amazon has expanded its line of Kindle products, so has it also expanded the Kindle’s deep integration and use of social media. Today, Amazon uses social media to facilitate sales, enhance customer experience, and to empower rich customer reviews – a full-circle strategy.

Step 1 – Encourage sales

The Kindle team uses popular social networks, mainly Twitter and Facebook to promote new products, advertise sales/daily deals, and to pass along useful information (e.g. retweet important book-related news.) Importantly, the Amazon team does not use one account for global communication which allows them to engage with specific markets. For instance, the Kindle team has noticed UK customers respond to deals and news differently so they have a separate @KindleUK Twitter account. By engaging customers on hot deals and new items, Amazon is able to facilitate sales quickly and directly to interested customers.

Step 2 – Enhance the reading experience

The Kindle group goes beyond simply using social media to communicate with customers; the Kindle products have deep (and increasing) integration with social networks on a software and hardware level. For instance, the Kindle e-reader hardware allows users to connect their Kindle device with Twitter and Facebook. This integration allows customers to share quotes, passages, and other content in whatever they are reading. As a result of these features, Kindle customers can easily share content which is meaningful with their friends and associates.

Step 3 – Facilitate customer reviews

Once customers have finished a book, the Kindle hardware and software integration allows customers to review the book on their linked social media networks. Reviewing the book via their social media networks allows customers to both share their opinion with their friends and offers a way to subtly advertise their completion of a book. Moreover, Amazon can then engage the customer based on their review and gather trends/metrics from the customer via their social media shares.

The future

Last week, Amazon acquired the book recommendation site Goodreads. While time will tell how Amazon makes use (or not) of this acquisition, it is a sign that Amazon is increasing the scope and importance of social integration with its Kindle products.